I. Hitler Came To Power Because German Business Paid Him to Fix Their Great Depression Two countries, two Great Depressions, two very different outcomes. We voted for FDR and got a New Deal with Social Security, banking reforms and a bunch of other progressive measures.
They got Adolph Hitler---and a lot of financial support from rich Americans.
Here is an explanation of why business approves of fascism in times of financial crisis. From an article which discusses the failure of the German socialist/communist revolution of 1918-9 by Bob Sewell:
http://www.marxist.com/germany-counter-revolution-rise-fascism/fascisms-rise-to-power.htm UP UNTIL 1929 the fascist grouplets had no real base in the population.
However, the world wide crash devastated Germany’s economy. Exports fell. There were massive layoffs. Companies were losing money.
In 1918 the German capitalists had been forced to give big concessions: the eight-hour day, trade union recognition, unemployment insurance, universal suffrage and other reforms, in order to prevent revolution. They gave these concessions whilst grinding their teeth and biding their time for revenge.
In 1929, their time for revenge had arrived. If the wealthy felt the pinch, everyone else felt the wolf breathing down their neck.
By 1930 the situation had changed drastically. As a consequence the German bourgeoisie decided to put its full weight behind the fascist movement. Big business poured in millions of marks into the Nazi party. Fritz Thyssen, head of the steel trust, in his book I Paid Hitler, openly admitted handing over one million marks to Hitler personally. He was also instrumental in winning sections of the bourgeoisie over to the Nazis:
Snip
For the ruling class repressive, brutal measures in defence of its interests are nothing new. They are prepared to take the most ruthless action in defence of their power and income. But the turn towards fascism marked a decisive stage, a qualitative change, in the attitude of the bourgeoisie. Fascism is a special form of reaction connected to the death agony of capitalism. Trotsky once commented that it was 'the distilled essence of imperialism'.
For capitalism under 'normal' conditions, the best form of government is its cheapest form: bourgeois democracy. The capitalists see the state armed bodies of men in defence of private property and their appendages - as a costly, necessary evil. If not held in check, by parliamentary government then the state bureaucracy and military caste can grow out of proportion and consume an enormous amount of the surplus value. Bourgeois democracy also provides a valuable safety valve for the discontent of the masses. To paraphrase Marx, the masses could say what they liked as long as the monopolies decided. Capitalism in crisis, however, forces the bourgeoisie to drive down wages to below subsistence levels, to force the worker into a semi-slave existence. Democratic rights won by the proletariat - freedom of speech, the right to organise, to strike, to vote - become obstacles to the capitalist class in their effort to drive down conditions. The capitalists turn towards greater state repression and even the establishment of Bonapartist regimes (military-police dictatorships). Yet Bonapartism is still insufficient to destroy completely the organisations of the working class, and a special form of reaction is therefore required to perform this task - fascism.
The author goes on to describe how fascism appeals to laid off professionals (the white collar workers) in a severe economic crisis, attempting to divide them from skilled laborers or blue collar workers who continue to have work.
Unlike other forms of reaction, fascism is the mass movement of the ruined middle class who have been organised as a human battering ram against the labour movement. The crisis of capitalism completely crushes the petty bourgeois and drives them into a frenzy. In Germany unemployment rose to four million in 1931, five million in 1932 and over six million in the following year. Inflation had earlier thrown whole layers of the middle class into penury. The suicide rate increased dramatically during these years. Many professionals fell below the level of the skilled worker. A professor was paid less than an ordinary worker. Not a small number were turned into vagabonds. After 1923, 97 per cent of Germans were without any capital, resulting in a startling polarisation of wealth.
The rationalisations of the boom years created enormous concentrations of capital as small industries and businesses were quickly swallowed up. In the crisis after 1929, at least the organised workers could fall back on the limited protection of trade union contracts and unemployment allowances. But for the German petty bourgeois - the bankrupt shopkeepers, the unemployed professionals, those on depreciated fixed incomes - they were in a state of utter desperation. They had lost everything, with many being thrown into the streets. In the past, sections of the middle class were pushed into the ranks of the working class, but now, with mass unemployment, they were turned into paupers. This situation resulted, as Trotsky explained, in the 'despair of the petty bourgeois, its yearning for change, the mass neurosis of the petty bourgeois, its readiness to believe in miracles, its readiness for violent measures; and the growth of its hostility to the proletariat, which has deceived its expectations.'
snip
The fascist organisation originates as anti-labour gangs, harassing workers' organisations, and attracting bands of mercenary thugs from the dregs of society. These layers formed the basis of Hitler's Storm Troops, the Sturm-Abteilung (SA), and the SS (Elite Guard). This human trash, made up of the lumpen proletariat in the main, can only become a serious mass force under special circumstances. Not only must there be deep economic crisis, and disillusionment with the workers' parties, but they need in particular the financial and political backing of the ruling class. 'We need a Fuehrer', sighed Moeller van den Bruck as early as 1923. In the late 1920s, many industrialists began to yearn for a 'strong man of destiny to liberate us from our misery'.
Now, we all know that wealthy
American businessmen did their part to finance Hitler and his war effort, too, because they were so intent upon overthrowing FDR. Here is a link:
http://rationalrevolution.net/war/american_supporters_of_the_europ.htmOther countries, like Saudi Arabia, have been pleased by Bush administration policy and have done all they can to help further the cause of fascism in America. The bombing of the World Trade Center is probably the most helpful thing any foreign power could have done to get this country to make a hard turn to the right. However, this journal is about the risk that a nation can be manipulated politically if its economy is manipulated.
II.Time Out From the History Lesson to Discuss How Republicans Have Sabotaged the Economy. I would like to reflect upon a few recent historical events, like the actions and policies of ex-presidents Bush/Reagan and the Federalists in the courts and the Republican controlled Congress. Recall that the Federalists’ stated goal is to roll back the clock to the days before FDR---that means the days of President Hoover. To me, that means they want to get back to the Great Depression and do it all over again the way that their granddaddy’s tried to do it.
How do I know that they want to relive the Great Depression? Compare what they have done to the description of what happened in Germany during its Great Depression--and remember that some of the same people who are in charge of the American right wing now, like Melon-Scaiffe and the Bush family are descended from the people who helped finance Hitler. Like the German factory owners who were forced to make concessions after the war, they have not forgotten their defeat at the hands of their nemesis FDR. They have been biding their time, waiting for their revenge.
Since Reagan (except for Clinton), federal policies have lead to an increase in the gap between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else, so that wealth disparity is now higher than it has been at any time since 1928 (see my last journal for why this is dangerous to the economy)
Phil Gramm got Congress to change the laws so that banks could begin committing the same kinds of reckless speculation and fraud that lead to the first Wall Street Panic. Gramm is a former economics professor, so he can not plead ignorance.
Bush got on TV last fall and
told a horrified nation that if we were not actually in a Second Great Depression we would be in one by next week sometime! That is the kind of dangerous talk that presidents do not usually engage in, because words like those tend to become a self fulfilling prophecy. I guess that Second Great Depression wasn’t getting here quickly enough.
Republicans and the mainstream media have been on a crusade to vilify the U.S. labor movement, spinning tales of $75/hour jobs that exist only in their dreams in order to rile up all the ex-mortgage writers who are out of work.
Bush-Cheney have offered a wide menu of such civil rights busting entrees as restrictions of the right to assemble and protest, restrictions of freedom of speech, restrictions of the right to sue plus the use of the DOJ for punitive prosecutions of “enemies of the state”----among others---all of which are designed to warm the heart of any corporate CEO who has seen his profit margin shrink.
Bush and the Republican Congress defied the will of their own Party and drove up the national debt to ridiculous levels (see Grover Norquist’s comments about bankrupting America), presumably so that there would never be enough money to bail anyone out in a crisis. Governors of states like Texas and Florida and California—all Republicans---have done the same. Rick Perry, in Texas actually stopped collecting money for the state’s unemployment fund last year, even though unemployment was rising. Now, he will be able to demand that the Feds save Texas.
And just yesterday Congressional Republicans showed that they are bound and determined to obstruct anything which might improve the nation’s current economic crisis. The Bush administration worked hard to create this recession/depression. They will be damned if they let the Democrats fix it, before they have a chance to drive up membership in the nation’s various chapters of the KKK and NeoNazi Parties. I am assuming that is the plan, since they keep telling us that all the good jobs are gone because immigrants have taken them, and we have been kicked out of our homes, because some Black folks somewhere tried to buy a house they could not afford.
III. Americans Don’t Goosestep, and We Don't Wiretap Rockefellers This is the plan. Will it work? I don't know. This is America, not Germany. Even the rich folks here are different than they are across the ocean. They do not trust ideology, just money, and while they can tolerate a thousand W.’s and Reagans---benign puppets who do as they are told by their corporate masters---all it takes is a Dick Nixon or a Dick Cheney drunk on power to remind the truly rich and powerful why they prefer a democratic form of government with checks and balances to one in which a single man can create enemies lists and listen in on all phone calls and have his attack puppy at the DOJ indict any CEO he pleases.
I hope everyone here caught Jay Rockefeller’s interview with KO and his little pause when Olbermann asked if the Senator had been wiretapped. No one wiretaps a Rockefeller in this country, even if he is a token Democrat from West Virginia. Rockefellers are too rich to mess with.
But the main reason fascism is probably doomed to fail in the United States is greed. In a country where everyone wants to get rich, it is going to be hard to find a megalomaniac who can stay focused on any cause long enough to avoid the temptation of all the money that you can make in politics if you are willing to break the rules.
I think that is why Dick Cheney is moving on to Dubai Ports instead of blowing up the world. There is no profit to be made in Armageddon.
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